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By Chris Rurik
For visitors to the Purdy Transfer Station in Gig Harbor, Wash., the landfill is a pleasant, grassy knoll. Beneath the grass is five-and-a-half decades’ worth of garbage. Until 1989, it was the final resting place for Key Peninsula waste.
Pierce County won a $2.3 million grant in September from the Washington State Department of Commerce Clean Energy Program to install a large solar array atop the capped landfill. The 15-acre site has few redevelopment options due to the industrial nature of the landfill waste, according to Public Information Specialist Christina Rohina of Pierce County. “(It is) an ideal use for the property to continue providing value to the community,” she said.
The project aligns with the county’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan, approved by the Pierce County Council in 2021, which sets a goal of reducing community-wide greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030. Citing the high volume of daily visitors to the transfer station’s current solid waste, recycling and composting hubs, Rohina said a solar array “will increase the visibility of renewable energy as a proof of concept.”
While a design has not been finalized, the solar array is expected to cover approximately 5 acres of the south-facing site and generate around 1 megawatt of power, which could power about 170 homes. Construction should begin in 2025. Because the landfill cap consists of 12 inches of soil and a synthetic geomembrane that cannot be penetrated — it prevents rainwater from leaching toxic chemicals out of the landfill — the array will be anchored with ballast.
A power purchase agreement with Peninsula Light Co. is being pursued. The county plans to reinvest any revenue from the solar facility in energy assistance and efficiency projects to benefit low-income residents on the Key Peninsula. The project is not expected to affect power rates.
“We would not anticipate any significant impact on our members,” said Jacob Henry, director of energy resources for PenLight. “As a full net requirements customer of the Bonneville Power Administration, PenLight benefits from access to an at-cost, clean power supply,” he told KP News in an email statement. “On average, about 95% of the energy we procure from BPA is carbon-free. Given that we have statutory rights to this clean and affordable energy, large-scale local solar generation is unlikely to be as cost-effective and would not result in significant emissions reductions.”
The Purdy landfill was an open-pit operation that closed in 1990 when it could no longer comply with environmental regulations. Peninsula Gateway editorials from the 1940s, uncovered by Gig Harbor historian Greg Spadoni described its creation.
A 1941 editorial decried the garbage dumped indiscriminately in plain sight on the peninsula and urged readers to form a committee to solve the problem. “An effort has been made to secure from the county some out-of-the-way tax title land, for a garbage dump.”
By 1945, though the newspaper still reported many complaints about people dumping their garbage on other people’s properties, it now had a solution. “This trouble can be overcome by taking garbage to the public garbage dump at Purdy. It is not generally known that there is a garbage dump at Purdy.”
Over the next 55 years, private vehicles drove directly into the dump and unloaded garbage among mountains of refuse. Waste pickers combed the piles for useful things. When an area was full, it was smoothed and covered with dirt, and a new area was created. Over the years, the dump played host to sportsmen’s turkey shoots and teens with .22s who shot rats for target practice.
By 1989, federal regulations required a waterproof lining to be installed under such landfills. Land Recovery, Inc. (now LRI), the operator of the site, determined such a move to be cost-prohibitive. According to a 1989 News Tribune article, between 90 and 100 tons of garbage were being added to the landfill every day, and LRI decided to collect it at the site and truck it away to larger dumps.
At the time it was the only Pierce County landfill not designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site. Ongoing monitoring includes sampling groundwater and methane test wells, and routine maintenance of the landfill cover and stormwater control system. The solar array will not interfere with these activities, according to Rohina, the county spokesperson.
The $2.3 million grant, administered by the Washington Department of Commerce, is expected to fund the entire project. It is one item on a long list of statewide efforts announced in June, and totaling $72 million, that aim to “benefit local communities while addressing climate change,” according to a press release.
The funds derive from Washington’s Climate Commitment Act. The 2021 law requires the state’s largest polluters to purchase emissions offsets in a cap-and-invest market. The state aims to reduce climate pollution, create jobs, and improve health.
This November, Washington voters rejected Initiative 2117, which would have overturned the Climate Commitment Act, by 62% to 38%.
Information about the Climate Commitment Act is available at www.climate.wa.gov.
Originally published by Key Peninsula News. Learn more here.